[Young Master Smeet]

Well, couple of quickies. Democracy isn't answer to economic question: but freedom is, as is information.  Economic actors need freedom to act/react and information has to be transmitted accurately and quickly.  A chief objection to markets is that the information they convey is slower than modern communication resources, when I can access a real time database of stocks and publicly declare my interest so others can see real time demand, what need then of pricing?Of course, numbers remain relevent: Gale-Shapley stable matching algorithms could be used for allocation of resources such as housing, and adjusted winner auctions could be usd at a strategic allocation level:http://www.nyu.edu/projects/adjustedwinner/(And who knows what else bright spark mathematicians and their deep inductive thinking might come up with if we actually ask them, instead of asking them to produc algorithms to get an edge on the stock market).Yes, abundance doesn't mean each gets their own personal Death Star, but that each may actualise themself, and develop freely as a human behing without fear of material constraint or enslavement to their work.

[Young Master Smeet]

http://labourlist.org/2015/07/education-is-a-collective-good-its-time-for-a-national-education-service/He fleshes out more policies:

Quote:

In a fast-changing world where new technology is making new industries and making others obsolete, we need an education system – a lifelong learning service – that offers new skills and understanding throughout our working lives….In 2020 we should start by reversing the cuts to the adult skills budget and expand it into a lifelong learning service by adding 2% to corporation tax (still comfortably the lowest in the G7). This funding would be hypothecated to expand adult learning into a lifelong learning education resource. The extra tax revenues brought by a high skill, high productivity and high pay economy will fund further expansion.A National Education Service will give working age people access throughout their lives to learn new skills or to re-train. It should also work with Jobcentre Plus to offer claimants opportunities to improve their skills, rather than face the carousel of workfare placements, sanctions and despair. We need a return to ambitious joined-up government.

Actually, I recall this being a flashpoint issue in the election: we were at an FE college that seemed to be facing heartbreaking levels of cuts (it's students had a lot of learning disabilities and seemed to come from some very marginalised communities).  I was insistent that education should be for its own sake, not to feed the labour market.What's even more heartbreaking, is what he is proposing is hardly that radical at all really, and just shows how little we matter in capitalism. (and yes, the cuts to FE are a scandal, that will haunt for years to come).

[Young Master Smeet]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02y2ffnSome quotes from the transcript:

Quote:

JEREMY CORBYN:(over)… where there are natural monopolies like Royal Mail, like the railways, it seems to me counterintuitive that we spend a great deal of money on investing in railway infrastructure, billions, and we then hand it over to train operating companies to run it. I think it is much better if we bring the railway system as a whole into public ownership. It’s not some extreme position. It’s supported on opinion polls by 60 to 70 per cent of the electorate.

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ANDREW MARR:Which reminds me slightly of the old days of Tony Benn, the alternative economic strategy and all of that. If I’d asked Tony Benn what his politics were and asked him about Marx, I think what he would have said is Marx was right about a lot of economics and wrong on the politics and his politics came from the English radical tradition, the Levellers and so forth. Is that by and large where you come from too?JEREMY CORBYN: Where … Well Marx obviously analysed what was hap pening in a quite brilliant way and the philosophy around Marx is absolutely fascinating. Does it all apply now? Well obviously philosophy applies at all times. Do we then take that as a way in which we ensure that people have reasonable security in their lives through public ownership of the major monopolies, then I think that is a fair point to look at. It’s not unpopular with the public. We’re after all subsidising the railway system to a massive degree. The nuclear power industry expects us to pay for their clean-up costs when they decommission nuclear power stations. The water industry are constantly sniping around wanting support for new  infrastructure projects. If we’re investing in infrastructure, then we the public should get the benefit of it.

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ANDREW MARR: Do you regard yourself as a Marxist?JEREMY CORBYN:(sighs)That’s a very interesting question actually.ANDREW MARR: Thank you.JEREMY CORBYN:I haven’t thought about that for a long time. I haven’t really read as much of Marx as I should have done. I’ve read quite a bit, but not that much, and I think Marx’s transition of history and the analysis of how you go from feudalism to capitalism and move onto a different stage is fascinating. So we all owe something to him. Probably inside you, even you do. You think you do?ANDREW MARR:(over)Well I remember Francis Wheen said we should regard Marx as a great Victorian novelist, a great observer of the scene, and I think I would probably go along with that

[Young Master Smeet]

Quote:

Some things can’t be replicated in pixels or even by a 3-D printer. Clothing, food, housing, fuel and computers can only be replicated by employing the labor power of exploited workers.

That's just flat wrong, they are building houses in China using 3d printers, printing will enable production of clothes from gloop.  Robots are increasingly doing the extractive work: this is a problem for the logic of capital, and it is a political problem.

[Young Master Smeet]

Twitter has exploded since Blair's intervention, and, say what you like, Corbyn has class: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jeremy-corbyn-slaps-down-silly-6113455%5B

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The left-winger was confronted with the claim Tony Blair won more elections than any Labour leader – and butted in: "Harold Wilson won more actually."

[Young Master Smeet]

We're not allowed to, you have to declare:

Quote:

I support the aims and values of the Labour Party, and I am not a supporter of any organisation opposed to it.

Never mind out own rule 6.  Personally, I think he'd be Harold Wilson warmed up, which just shows where the Labour Party has moved…

[Young Master Smeet]

Anyone at tolpuddle for this:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ8nO1n1YVg&feature=youtu.be(Jeremy Corbyn MP Speaks at Tolpuddle Festival 2015)

[Young Master Smeet]

I think his schtick is to look at the way capitalism emerged from feudalism, and see parrallels.  I'd imagine a feudal lord looking at the merchants coraaled in their cities would have felt themselves entirely safe from their 'buying and selling', how can that compete with 'patronage and obligation'?From what i'm hearing, this is in some ways what I've been looking into: price without value (or practically zero value) sucking up the surplus cvalue, with an increasingly diminishing directly productive workforce.  You're right, that, ultimately, I think b ig capital and its political clout will out (as seen in the slapping Uber and AirBNB have been getting), I suppose in Mason's terms, that just sets up the political battlefield for where he's going.But, a tech aware, multi-skilled organisationally alert citizenry is needful for socialisation of production, so there may be a germ of use in there…Mason hinmself retweeted this critique:

Quote:

If I have to read another article where the "sharing economy" is said to have democratized wealth distribution I will hire an Uber to run me over.

http://www.metafilter.com/151310/Project-Zero

[Young Master Smeet]

Well, he seems to now be leading the constituency nominations, which given the four way split on first preferences, means he's transferring well…My guess is that far from purging the party, as some noises have been saying, he'd work to conciliate and end up a figurehead, possibly even leave the deputy to run the party while he takes up full time campaigning?  It wouldn't be earth shattering, maybe earth wobbling..

[Young Master Smeet]

LBird wrote:

Is that 'bourgeois logic' or 'True Logic, as given to us by God himself'?Back to the playpen, YMS.

Logic you are unable to refute, and which seems to have reduced you to bluster.

[Young Master Smeet]

Quote:

You play with your 'logic' and 'words',

Logic you are unable to refute.  To retiterate, if the only way to know the validity of a ruth claim is to vote on it, how can we know the result of the vote?

[Young Master Smeet]

Lbird, have done.  So, bourgeois science throew off the shackles of feudal superstition, and cleared the way for us to understand the world clearly, and it is the job of socialism to put that understanding to use.  Cheers, glad to know I was right all along.

[Young Master Smeet]

Quote:

Truth can be elected, and thus the good life for humans can be established, by active humans employing social theory and practice.

This is demonstrably untrue.A) A truth claim can only be verified by a vote. The polity votes on the truth claim.C) The result of the vote is itself a truth claim.D) The result of the vote can only be discovered by a further vote.

[Young Master Smeet]

LBird wrote:

So, it's not 'materialism', then?

hmm, "true materialism" would seem to be a species of materialism; and "naturalism" is also considered (in some forms) a species of materialism… could be materialism…

[Young Master Smeet]

Quote:

Here we see how consistent naturalism or humanism is distinct from both idealism and materialism, and constitutes at the same time the unifying truth of both.

Shirley, you should be calling the theory naturalism, or humanism, since those are the terms Chucky expressly uses in the above. In the same text, Chaz also praises Feurbach for :

Quote:

The establishment of true materialism and of real science, by making the social relationship of “man to man” the basic principle of the theory

so instead of idealism-materialism, maybe we should use Marx' own word: true materialism?

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